Because of interleague play, many of this season’s All-Stars have already seen who’s on the other side. But there’s a unique opportunity to see the best of the other league on one field in Minnesota. So I asked some All-Stars if they were looking forward to a particular matchup today.
An easy way to think about productivity is Efficiency x Frequency. If you’re really efficient at doing something, but you don’t do it very often, you won’t be very productive. Look at the career of Carlos Quentin. When he’s played, he’s always hit, but rarely is he healthy enough to play, so he hasn’t actually produced much. By the same measure, being frequently inefficient won’t get you very far, either. True production comes from maximizing your opportunities while remaining efficient.
A few weeks back, Jeff Sullivan wrote about Carlos Gomez and his unprecedented first-pitch swing rate. Gomez is swinging at the first pitch in over half of his plate appearances. That’s one of the highest rates in recent history. Not only that, but he’s doing some pretty serious damage on those pitches, to the tune of a 1.046 OPS.
Where there’s a leaderboard, there’s someone in second place. In this case, that guy’s first-pitch swing rate is still quite a bit lower than Gomez’s because, as we’ve covered, Gomez is in relatively uncharted territory. But still, there exists a guy who has the second-highest first-pitch swing rate in baseball. There has to. And that guy happens to be doing even more damage on those pitches than Gomez. That guy happens to be doing more damage on first pitches than just about anybody, really. That guy happens to be Mike Zunino.
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Taijuan Walker is back. It’s an unusual thing to say of a guy who was barely here in the first place, but Walker finally made his big-league 2014 debut Monday night, turning in six decent frames against the Astros. The hope is he’ll stabilize a back of the rotation left in the unstable hands of Brandon Maurer and Erasmo Ramirez. More than anything, the Seattle Mariners are just happy to have Walker seemingly past his shoulder issue. If all goes well, Walker will be starting the rest of the way, and though he’s short on major-league experience, it’s interesting to note some adjustments he flashed. Walker started for the Mariners three times in 2013; his 2014 start doesn’t fit the same patterns.
Much more will be learned, of course, over the following weeks. One start against one opponent can’t be easily compared to other starts against other opponents, and so Walker will take some time to even out. But Monday, Walker showed some differences in his pitch mix. He showed a difference in his setup. And he showed a difference in his delivery. What looks like it’s changed, for one of baseball’s very best young pitching prospects? Let’s get into a little bit of detail.
Ever since it opened in July 1999, Seattle’s Safeco Field has had a reputation as a pitcher’s park, and for good reason. (“Everyone thinks of subpar offense in Seattle because the Mariners have given nearly 1,500 plate appearances to Willie Bloomquist over more than a decade, right?” That’s not the right answer, but it certainly is an answer.) Since the park’s first full season in 2000, the Mariners have consistently hit for more power on the road, ranking ahead of only the Padres in terms of percentage of overall ISO and SLG they’ve compiled at home:
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Each weekday during the minor-league season, FanGraphs is providing a status update on multiple rookie-eligible players. Note that Age denotes the relevant prospect’s baseball age (i.e. as of July 1st of the current year); Top-15, the prospect’s place on Marc Hulet’s preseason organizational list; and Top-100, that same prospect’s rank on Hulet’s overall top-100 list.
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Reymin Guduan, LHP, Houston Astros (Profile)
Level: Rookie-Advanced Age: 22 Top-15: N/A Top-100: N/A
Line: 7 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 6/4 K/BB, 1.29 ERA, 3.97 FIP
Summary
Can you feel the heat?
Life is good for Robinson Cano. He likes his new city, and his new city likes him back. He’s secured the contract of a man’s wildest dreams, and he’s a leading vote-getter for the 2014 All-Star Game. He owns one of the top batting averages in all of baseball, and while Cano’s new team isn’t leading its division, it is in the race for the first time in years, with more total wins than Cano’s old team. There isn’t a lot of disappointment to be found anywhere. Ten-year contracts tend to lead to disappointment, but generally not in Year One, and this many months in, Cano is all smiles.
And Cano has been one of the better players in baseball. He has been the Mariners’ best position player, among a unit that needed a player like him. There’s just that one part of his statistical profile. Time and time again, people have been told that Cano is a line-drive hitter, not a power hitter. Well, it’s almost July, and Cano has four home runs. A year ago, he hit 27. Right now he has as many homers as Billy Hamilton, and we’re no longer dealing with insignificant sample sizes. Cano has never been considered a true power hitter, but he’s never been further from being a true power hitter as he is today.
Naturally, one gets to wondering. It’s not like Cano’s skills have eroded. His overall approach is the same, and he’s still drilling liners. You just wonder about the balls flying over the fence. Leaving New York doesn’t explain everything — a year ago, Cano actually hit five more dingers on the road. Seattle has long played lefty-friendly. There has to be more behind the power drought.
The easiest place to start is with Cano’s balls in play. Last year, 44 percent of them were grounders. He spent the prime of his career hovering in the mid-40s. This year, he’s up to 55 percent, and while it looked like Cano was coming out of it with a more air-friendly May, he’s gone back to hitting grounders in June. A change this sudden, to this degree, is notable, and obviously you can’t hit the ball out on a grounder or most liners. You turn your attention to Cano’s swing.
“You should go look at the research again and see what the charts say,” Chris Young, the Seattle Mariners pitcher, emphatically told me one afternoon this season. We were talking about high fastballs and he didn’t agree with something I’d said.
Each weekday during the minor-league season, FanGraphs is providing a status update on multiple rookie-eligible players. Note that Age denotes the relevant prospect’s baseball age (i.e. as of July 1st of the current year); Top-15, the prospect’s place on Marc Hulet’s preseason organizational list; and Top-100, that same prospect’s rank on Hulet’s overall top-100 list.
Summary
This independent league find has always been old for his levels, but he has legitimate stuff and deception.
The main story of the last night’s installment of the Battle for Grass Creek between the Royals and the Mariners was Hisashi Iwakuma. Iwakuma shut down the (admittedly less-than-intimidating) Kansas City bats with an eight-inning effort, during which he allowed only four hits, no walks and no runs, and struck out seven. The Mariners needed all Iwakuma could bring, because the Royals themselves only allowed the Mariners one run. The Mariners’ lone run came right after Royals’ manager Ned Yost made the questionable decision to have left-handed starter Danny Duffy walk the left-handed hitting Robinson Cano to pitch to right-handed Corey Hart. The problems with that decision have been discussed elsewhere. My own short summary: some intentional walks might make sense, but this was not one of them.
Yost made another interesting decision in the bottom of the ninth. With none out, a runner on first and the Mariners’ closer, Fernando Rodney, on the mound, Yost had Norichika Aoki lay down a sacrifice bunt. Aoki did so successfully, but after an Eric Hosmer walk, the Royals made two more outs and it all came to naught. After the game, Yost explained his decision:
Because I want to take a shot at tying it. My ‘pen was strong enough where I felt like I could go ahead and go for the tie. Some nights you don’t. Some nights you play for the win.
Like intentional walks, not all bunts are bad. Sometimes they are the smart play, sometimes they are not. It is not always easy to say one way or the other. Yost’s teams have sometimes bunted in situations where it made sense. Was this one of those situations?
In a close game Tuesday night, the Angels faced Robinson Cano with two on, two outs, and a base open. Standing on deck, instead of actual protection, was Justin Smoak, and in the clearest demonstration of protection theory, or lack thereof, the Angels put Cano on to take their chances with the next guy. If all you knew were those sentences, this wouldn’t seem worthy of a blog post. Smoak might one day turn into a good hitter, but so far it’s been all hype and lousy results. Cano is one of the very best players in the world, still hanging out in his prime. Yeah, you’d rather face Smoak than Cano, and while doing so requires you put another runner on base, the intentional walk is a low win-expectancy swing. Nothing seems strange, except for one thing.
Cano wasn’t simply intentionally walked by an Angels pitcher. Cano was intentionally walked by Angels starting pitcher C.J. Wilson. Left-handed Angels starting pitcher C.J. Wilson, who’s always run a big lefty-killing platoon split. Wilson put the lefty on to load the bases to face a switch-hitter, and as such, Mike Scioscia both played the matchups and didn’t play the matchups. It became a story because Smoak cleared the bases with a double, but even had Smoak gotten out, as was the likelihood, this decision would still be of interest. It isn’t often you see strategy that seems to run counter to the ordinary strategy. If there’s one thing a manager usually likes, it’s having his lefty pitcher get to face a lefty hitter.